So after completing one of my favorite projects to take offline payments through the WooCommerce admin interface, I threw the idea out to share it at a local WordPress meet up. As soon as I walked in the door I came to the realization – I am a advanced developer, noob speaker. Thankfully everyone around me was well versed in the topic at hand, recognized me from the community and understood I was a speaking virgin.

Developer.. Uh.. eh.. umm.. oh my name is James

I couldn’t even get my name out smoothly when we were doing introductions! I would like to claim I was just engulfed by the presence of other well known supporters in the WordPress and WooCommerce community. People that have spoken to large crowds such as WordCamp, WordPress Forum moderators and business owners.

Knowing I was the first to present, I was hoping that I would get to see someone more experienced go first – but that was just unrealistic realistically speaking.

I got this! Oh wait..

Once it was time for me to present to the room, I was like “I got this“. Walked up, plugged my computer into the projector and my screen resolution decided to go back to 1995 displaying at 800×600 via HDMI. The “I got this” boost quickly turned to  “I don’t got this!”. Apparently my computer 101 knowledge went out the window, I couldn’t find how to change my display resolution and started getting instructions from the crowd.

Once I got the kinks worked out things started to smooth over and I was able to complete my presentation, answer some quick Q&A and pass the mic.

As unconfident as I was going in, I got a lot of great feedback and connections afterwards.

Lesson Learned

Don’t be afraid or nervous to speak about something you are proud of. Being surrounded by other professionals that love what you love is a place to build strong connections, accept feedback and move forward. Do I plan on doing this again? Yes, will I bring a notepad with the topics I would like to cover? You better believe it.

Can you spot me?